The Silo and the City
Letter From the Editor
In the spring of 2024, Dan, Lorenzo and I met for coffee in a silo at Sternewirth. Hotel Emma calls it “San Antonio’s living room”; our team would argue it’s San Antonio’s best room. We were three local creatives with a question: what would it take to make a magazine that saw San Antonio as we did? Week after week, we returned to the corner pictured on this fall’s cover and began to build it together.
I often wonder how many other ideas have taken shape in that room and found their way into the life of the city. That thought helped reveal this issue’s theme: Forces of Culture, the people shaping San Antonio through what they make together. Our cover returns to Hotel Emma because it brings big-thinking, like-minded people together and embodies the statement on our inaugural issue cover: “Made in San Antonio. Meant for the World.” So do the people whose stories fill these pages.
The nook that held our team’s earliest conversations felt like the natural choice for this fall’s cover. Its towering antique European tapestry lends it romance and intrigue, while the worn leather chair invites you to sink in and dream up your next big idea. It could be a room anywhere in the world, yet anyone who knows Sternewirth would recognize it as San Antonio.
Morgan Hook’s whimsical and wild autumnal floral sculpture climbs toward the tapestry like a thought taking shape. Jana Cantua captured that moment, along with many of the faces and spaces in this issue. She makes San Antonio itself an aesthetic: unmistakably local, unapologetically vibrant and seen through an elevated editorial eye.
Many of the people in these pages grew up here, left to work and learn in other cities around the world, then came home to build something informed by those experiences and particular to San Antonio. Others arrived from elsewhere and put down roots because they recognized something here worth joining. Together, they are helping this city’s creative economy grow.
It is a particular honor to partner with Hotel Emma on this issue. Copies of Voice of San Antonio will be in every guest room, where travelers can meet the people behind the city they are visiting. I hope San Antonians find something new here, too: a person to follow, a place to visit or a reason to look again at something familiar.
When we left that first meeting at Sternewirth a few years ago, none of us knew where the conversation would lead. Returning with this issue and sharing it with people arriving from around the world is a moment we will always remember, and one for which we’re deeply grateful.
Eleanora Morrison
Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director
@eleanoramorrison | ellie@voiceofsanantonio.com
Inside the Fall Issue
Inside Hotel Emma: San Antonio’s Living Room At Hotel Emma, the city has found a place to gather, linger and imagine what comes next.
Forces of Culture: Six features on leaders redefining the city’s cultural life, including James Lindbloom on the creative production behind Hotel Emma, plus Bria Woods, Sebastian Guajardo, Mia Lopez, Dan Menelly, and Ginger & Mario Diaz.
The Creative Current: Ten profiles of the people shaping San Antonio’s art, food, style and design right now.
Check In, Dress Up: Our fall fashion story with MOSS Designer Consignment. Top labels in their next lives, styled with imagination.
The Company We Keep: The season’s events and causes, from the McNay to Ballet San Antonio, OPERA San Antonio, The Orchestra San Antonio, Texas Biomed and more.
Complimentary print copies are available at Hotel Emma and select locations throughout San Antonio.